April 26, 2008

November 13, 2007

“Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words—’mank’ and ‘ind’. What do these words mean? It’s a mystery, and that’s why so is mankind.”

January 27, 2007

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”

October 29, 2006

“There are two ways not to suffer from the inferno we are all living in every day. The first suits most people: accept the inferno and become part of it to the point where you don’t even see it any more. The second is riskier and requires constant attention and willingness to learn: seek out and know how to recognize whoever and whatever, in the midst of the inferno, is not inferno, and help them last, give them space.”

September 20, 2006

June 23, 2006

Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity: we need it to stand on this earth as men and women. And the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.

February 28, 2006

February 2, 2005

“Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

January 18, 2005

Someone asked, “How do you explain what we do next,” and I said, “Dance. Fuck. Fight.” Make yourself indigestible to the system so that if you are ever swallowed up, you will be vomited out. I really think so. Make yourself unemployable. You’ll never get an interesting job if you’re employable. Get arrested, form a punk band and go to Indonesia and fall in love with someone who doesn’t speak your language. I’m not kidding.

December 27, 2004

“A free and independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy. It serves to inform the voting public on matters relevant to its well-being. Why they’ve stopped doing that is a mystery. I mean, 300 camera crews outside a courthouse to see what Kobe Bryant is wearing when the judge sets his hearing date, while false information used to send our country to war goes unchecked? What the fuck happened? These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far. They have violated a trust. ‘Was the president successful in convincing the country?’ Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! ‘Hey, we just give the people what they want.’ ‘What can we do, this administration is secretive.’ ‘But the last season of Friends really is news.’ The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed… You’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit! I… fuck it. Just fuck it…”

August 17, 2004

“I don’t think Osama bin Laden sent those planes in to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel and our ties with the Saudi family and all our military bases in Saudi Arabia. Y’know why I think that? Because that’s what he fucking said!”

Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show features news, angry commentary and excellent music. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

Both projects focus on our media-marinated world, political lies, corporate tyranny, and the folks fighting the good fight against these monsters.

All brought to you by your pal Jake Sexton. Jake is one of those writer, DJ, activist, anarcho, librarian types the movie stars are always talking about. Sadly, his currently overstuffed life prevents him from giving this site the proper obsessive attention it deserves

Media News

October 11, 2011

Recursive

Some years back, I wrote about my recent visit to Comic Con, the yearly pop culture mega-convention in San Diego. I did some critiquing of it, and “entertainment journalism” as willing accomplices/collaborators of the entertainment industry’s marketing machine. What was most interesting to me at the time is the way that secrecy built hype. You’re a big video game company, you’ve got a new game coming out in a year, but you hide all the details. Which makes all of the fans and “journalists” so hungry for news that they’ll jump at your tiniest leak or press release. This makes good tacticaly sense for marketers, but ends up being pretty insane for the audience.

And today, I’ve just seen the most ridiculous example of parceled-out hype in a while.

A big, new superhero movie called “The Avengers” is going to be released in the spring of 2012. And today, there was much pomp and giddiness for the release of the First Official Trailer. Remember, this isn’t the movie that fans want to see, this is a commercial for the movie. But that wasn’t enough. Yesterday, the television show “Entertainment Tonight” gave us all an “exclusive first look” at the commercial. For those of you who couldn’t wait 12 hours, the TV show showed clips of the commercial for the movie you actually want to see.

And that’s not all! One popular fan site gave readers a “preview” of the Entertainment Tonight segment! So you could watch a preview of the preview of the commerical for the movie.

I understand why the studios do this, and I sometimes get caught up in the spiral myself. Hell, there’s even some logic buried in there for the fans. But, objectively speaking, that doesn’t make it any less nuts.